The specific aim of the proposal is to obtain partial support for travel and conference fees for the invited speakers and discussion leaders for the Gordon Conference on Fertilization and the Activation of Development. The major aim of the conference is to bring together scientists working on animal fertilization at molecular and cellular levels, to define and analyze important problems and generate new approaches to their solution. Basic research on fertilization contributes to contraceptive development, infertility treatment and improved production of agricultural animals. Major problems addressed by the conference will be: (1) the molecular nature of receptors involved in the interaction of sperm with extracellular egg envelopes; (2) the site where the sperm acrosome reaction occurs during mammalian fertilization and the molecular nature of the inducer(s); (3) the molecular basis for sperm-egg plasma membrane fusion; (4) methods for measuring intracellular free calcium levels in eggs and the role of calcium in initiating events in egg activation; (5) role of phosphoinositide metabolites in activating eggs; (6) control of sperm motility and respiration; (7) mechanisms of increased protein synthesis after fertilization, and the functions and control of utilization of maternal messenger RNAs after fertilization; (8) subcellular basis and developmental significance of cytoplasmic rearrangements triggered by fertilization.